Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use waste in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, adjective, verb

Waste means excess of material, useless by-products, or damaged, unsaleable products; garbage; rubbish. Example: “The cage was littered with animal waste.”

Examples of waste by meaning

nounExcrement or urine.

  • The cage was littered with animal waste.

nounA wasteland; an uninhabited desolate region; a wilderness or desert.

  • The pampas of Argentina and the chilly wastes of Patagonia, like the prairies and deserts of North America, were largely shunned by Spanish settlers until the 1870s.1992, Edwin Williamson, The Penguin history of Latin America, London; New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 33

nounThe action or progress of wasting; extravagant consumption or ineffectual use.

  • That was a waste of time!
  • Her life seemed a waste.
  • 'Rebel railwaymen' at Birmingham New Street refused to wear the new uniforms on the grounds that they were a "complete waste of public money".2023 March 22, Mike Esbester, “Staff, the public and industry will suffer”, in RAIL, number 979, page 39

adjectiveRejected as being defective; eliminated as being worthless; produced in excess.

  • Oxygen levels on Earth skyrocketed 2.4 billion years ago, when cyanobacteria evolved photosynthesis: the ability to convert water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and waste oxygen using solar energy.2013 September-October, Katie L. Burke, “In the News”, in American Scientist

verbTo squander (money or resources) uselessly; to spend (time) idly; to dissipate.

  • We wasted millions of dollars and several years on that project.
  • Stopping high-speed trains wastes energy and time, so why not simply slow them down enough for a moving platform to pull alongside?2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly)
  • Kay (1822-1897), afterwards Lord Justice of Appeal, had rooms on the same staircase as myself, and we wasted a great deal of time together, both in term and in my second summer vacation. .1909, Francis Galton, Memories of my life, page 69

More sentences with waste

  • The waters of the lake were transparent until the factory dumped waste there.From the entry transparent
  • Remember to turn the tap off once you've finished so you don't waste water.From the entry turn off
  • This idea isn't a runner. Let's not waste any more time on it.From the entry runner
  • Katie despised video games because she saw them as a trashy, boring waste of time.From the entry despise
  • Dumping waste in the river will have serious implications for the environment.From the entry implication
  • The miners plundered the jungle for its diamonds till it became a muddy waste.From the entry plunder
  • A garbologist forages through waste paper baskets in search of interesting documents.From the entry garbologist
  • She watched him waste away from lack of food or exercise.From the entry waste away
  • Don't waste your time trying to change his mind: he's completely intransigent.From the entry intransigent
  • We're not supposed to waste time chewing the fat with the customers.From the entry chew the fat
  • Don't waste your time with that; their operations are nickel and dime.From the entry nickel and dime
  • There was a decided ugliness to the patch of waste ground.From the entry decided
  • These headings are run in because a free-hanging style would just be a waste of column inches.From the entry run in
  • George found Professor Schnublett's repetitive lectures to be wholly noneducational and, in fact, a waste of time.From the entry noneducational
  • It is a waste of military resources to bomb nonstrategic targets.From the entry nonstrategic
  • The badlands are a roadless waste where few humans ever venture.From the entry roadless
  • What a waste of time this has been. We might as well have stayed at home.From the entry might as well
  • Asking him for money is a waste of time: he won't give you any.From the entry waste of time
  • The technogenic mineral deposit consisted of waste from the nearby mine.From the entry technogenic
  • Buying preformatted floppy disks means that you don't have to waste time formatting them.From the entry preformatted
  • Don't waste your time with him - he's all hat and no cowboy.From the entry all hat and no cowboy
  • It's only a milk truck, don't waste ammunition for the main gun.From the entry milk truck
  • Golf has always struck me as a waste of time.From the entry strike
  • Don't waste your breath on these jokers round here.From the entry joker
  • That was an appalling waste of money.From the entry appalling
  • Waste is a negative externality arising from consumption.From the entry externality
  • The garbage truck collects all residential municipal waste.From the entry garbage
  • I just filled out that survey on roadside waste pick-up.From the entry survey
  • Shortbread is my favorite cold pastry, yet being so brittle it crumbles easily, and a lot goes to waste.From the entry brittle
  • These headings are of the run-in type because a free-hanging style would just be a waste of column inches.From the entry run-in
  • Using the sophisticated code was useless since the spy merely stole the plain text from the waste basket.From the entry plain text

Meaning of waste

  1. noun Excess of material, useless by-products, or damaged, unsaleable products; garbage; rubbish.
  2. noun Excrement or urine.
  3. noun A wasteland; an uninhabited desolate region; a wilderness or desert.

Full definition of waste

Questions about waste in a sentence

How do you use waste in a sentence?
Waste is used as a noun, adjective and verb. For example: “The cage was littered with animal waste.”
What is a short sentence with waste?
“Her life seemed a waste.”
What does waste mean?
Waste means excess of material, useless by-products, or damaged, unsaleable products; garbage; rubbish.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waste (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use waste in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/waste. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.